"To yield is to be preserved whole. To be bent is to become straight. To be empty is to be full. To be worn out is to be renewed. To have little is to posses. To have plenty is to be perplexed. Therefore the sage embraces the One and becomes the model of the world."
- Lao Tzu

Stockholm,
Dec 9 (IANS) French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who
has won the 2008 Nobel prize for literature, says the Mahabharata
has been a sustaining factor in his life, especially as a
storyteller.

"The
great Indian epic Mahabharata has been a sustaining factor
in my life - not so much philosophically but in seeking stories,"
Le Clezio told IANS in an interview here.

"I
consider myself basically a story-teller, not a moulder of
thought," said the writer who is here for the Nobel prize
ceremony Wednesday.

Le
Clezio's links with India do not stop there.

Having
grown up in Mauritius, Le Clйzio spoke of "the inescapable
contact with India and Indians".

"One
cannot grow up in Mauritius and not imbibe Indian life. It
is not just across the sea from you but, indeed, all around
you: customs, culture, languages, politics. Many of my earliest,
and continuing, friends have been Indians. They have lived
for generations there but it is as if they had never left
India."

In
fact, a chief protagonist of one of Le Clezio's major works,
"The Treasure Seeker", is an Indian girl. "The
Book of Flights" and "Desert" are some of his
other works.

The
Swedish Academy awarded the 2008 prize to Le Clezio, recognizing
him as the "author of new departures, poetic adventure
and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below
the reigning civilization".

Asked
if French writers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre with whom
Le Clezio has been favourably compared had been his role models,
he said: "Yes and no."

"I
have admired Sartre much but not been directly influenced
by him....after all, I have accepted the Nobel Prize, haven't
I?" he said with a disarming twinkle in his eyes.

The
great Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1964 but disdainfully refused to accept it saying: "I
do not wish to be hitherto known as that Sartre that received
the Nobel Prize".